SENTIMENT HAS NO PLACE IN OUR COURTS

MISTAKE OF REGISTRY WILL NOT BE VISITED ON LITIGANT

Cooperative And Commerce Bank Nig. Ltd. Plc V. Attorney General Anambra State & Anor (1992) 8 NWLR (Pt. 261) 528 at 561 held as follows;
“it will be contrary to all principles to allow litigants to suffer for the mistake of the Court Registry. In other words, the Court will not visit the sin of the Court’s Registry on a litigant or his counsel, unless, it was shown that the litigant or his counsel was a party thereto or had full knowledge of the sin or mistake and encouraged or condoned the said act. Therefore, on the authorities, justice, equity, fairness and good conscience, must persuade me, to hold further that this appeal deserves to succeed and it in fact does.”

RATIONALE FOR SOMETIMES DEPARTURE FROM THE EVIDENCE ACT BY THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COURT OF NIGERIA

The resolution of labour/employment disputes is the resolution of disputes where the nature of rights is one in personam. This is an area of law where even the identity card of an employee is the property of the employer and must be surrendered immediately the employment relationship ceases or comes to an end. (Exhibit D5 actually demanded that the claimant should surrender any and all correspondences, materials and equipment provided to her by the defendant without retaining copies in any form whatsoever should the claimant discover them in her possession.) This is an area of law where upon the cessation of employment, an employee who hitherto had access (often very limited access) to the documents of the employer immediately ceases to so have simply because the employee’s internet access had been immediately clogged. See, for instance, Exhibit D5 couched as a non-competition term but which threatens the claimant with prosecution should she as much as divulge any information or document through sending such to herself vide her home address or personal email account. There is even the additional threat to the claimant that UAE law recognizes this behavior as theft punishable by imprisonment – this is even aside from the fact the claimant will forfeit any unpaid salary or commission and be liable to be sued for damages. This is an area of law where an employer expected to certify a document will willingly refuse to so certify the document. God save the employee if the employer is a public institution for which the Evidence Act requires certification before any secondary evidence can be rendered.

— B.B. Kanyip, J. Awogu v TFG Real Estate (2018) – NICN/LA/262/2013

SECTION 12 OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COURT ACT PERMITS THE COURT TO BE FLEXIBLE

The very first thing a labour court understands is the difficulty of the employee accessing documents to prove his/her case. It is as a result of all of this that the NIC, as a special Court, is permitted under section 12 of the NIC Act 2006 to be flexible, informal and depart from the Evidence Act if the interest of justice so demands. The NIC realizes that section 12 of its enabling Act is not license to act anyhow. So when it comes to admissibility of especially documentary evidence, the NIC insists that once the issue of authenticity is raised, particular care must be taken to admit only documents that are authentic; and in deserving cases the NIC had refused to admit inappropriate documents even when section 12 of the NIC Act was relied on.

— B.B. Kanyip, J. Awogu v TFG Real Estate (2018) – NICN/LA/262/2013

NATIONAL COURTS DO NOT QUALIFY AS INTERNATIONAL COURTS

In Valentine Ayika V. Republic Of Liberia (2011) CCJELR, pg. 237, para 13, the Court held that the Supreme Court of Liberia and for that matter any other Court in Member States does not qualify as international court within the meaning of Article 10 (d)(ii) of the Protocol as amended.